South Africa Embraces Blockchain, Launches Ethereum-based Project

The ‘southest’ African nation is stepping into the crypto-friendly world as its central bank implements a novel proof-of-concept (PoC) initiative. This program aims to copy trans-banks arrangements to the blockchain, built on Ethereum.

South Africa in the game

This week, on February 13, a new financial tech program was declared by the state's Reserve Bank. This plan will comprise “Project Khokha.” According to the official
notification,
it is a blockchain-backed PoC pursuit through cooperation with ConsenSys.

Headquartered in New-York, ConsenSys will permit the handling of multiple payments with the assistance of Quorum in South Africa. The last one, by the way, is Ethereum facility
blockchain,
created by JPMorgan as well as EthLab, which is an Ether dev young company.

In the report, it was also said that the goal of this initiative is to get an empirical insight into distributed ledger tech trends. That will happen via the creation of the PoC. That will be done in in the frames of a deal with the banking system of Africa's nation.

The PoC aspires to copy trans-banking clearing and arrangement on a ledger. This will allow the top-state bank and the financial system in the country to evaluate the possible advantages and ventures of the ledger.

Despite controversies

The idea to examine blockchain tech trend in South Africa was declared in spite of the contradictory statements made by the Reserve Bank’s deputy ruler. He, in his turn, in summer 2017 affirmed that the central bank’s emission of a cyber-coin, backed by blockchain, could be too jeopardizing.

Remarkably, after the launch of PoC project, the relevant state report will be output in the second quarter of a current year.

Inspired by Asia’s blockchain adoption

On top of that, following
the sample of Singapore,
the Reserve Bank of the nation South Africa intends to emit its own virtual coin to push forward the trans-banking arrangement PoC.

Interestingly, Singaporean program, called Project Ubin, witnessed the virtual coin to boost its trans-banking blockchain concept, which was also backed up by Ethereum.

At the same, the South African top-government bank also asserted that PoC initiative is not a straightforward sign of blockchain embrace in the country as a significant tech boosting its national payment system.

On the contrary, the bank emphasized that this empirical testing will help to grasp the sense of utilizing a tokenized asset on a ledger to remit value.